1. What is meant by 'soul' in the Writings. For the usage of the term 'soul' in the preparatory
works of Swedenborg, see our Notes on "Swedenborg's Search for the
Soul," Part Four, section II.
In the Theological Writings also, the term 'soul'
is used with various meanings. "In the universal sense the soul is that
from which another thing is or lives. Thus the soul of the body is its
spirit, for from this the body lives. But the soul of the spirit is its
still more internal life, from which it has wisdom and understanding."(1606)

(1) If by soul is understood life then the Lord
alone is life.(1607)
(2) The "soul" is the inmost of man, or that
human internal which is above even angelic consciousness.(1608) 1608 This
is the
soul of the spiritual mind(1609)
(3) The inmost, taken together with all the
"unopened" interior degrees of the mind may be called the 'soul' of a man,
angel, or spirit.(1610)
(4) The spiritual mind is the soul of the natural
mind.(1611)
(5) The natural mind is the "proximate soul"
of the body.(1612)
(6) T he blood is the corporeal soul as the
container of the life of the body.(1613)
(7) That which is interior is the soul of the
exteriors.(1614)
(8) The spirit or angel as to spiritual substance
(inclusive of the inmost, the mind, and the spiritual body) as he is seen
in the
spiritual world in human form, is called a 'soul'.(1615)
This soul or spirit is called the 'interior man' and is described as
organic, to distinguish it from the influx of mutual love from the
Lord.(1616)
(9) The entire immortal organism of a spirit, including
even the retained "limbus" of natural substance, may be comprised in the
expression 'the soul'.
(10) Novitiate spirits are called 'souls',
especially spirits in "the lower earth."(1617)
Novitiate spirits which are evil are
called 'evil souls.'(1618)
(11) The entire spiritual heredity from the
father, conveyed in the seed, is called "an offshoot from the father's
soul", or, simply, "the soul".(1619)
(12) Human souls are called 'souls of life',
which those of animals are called 'living souls' and those of plants 'vegetative
souls' or 'uses'.(1620)

Note: In WE 1148 (which is not cited in Swedenborg's
Index) the word "soul" is used to refer to the inmost which is actuated
by the Messiah alone, while angels and spirits act upon our minds.(1621)
Men after death are there described as minds which enjoy "a quasicorporeal
texture which is a substance mediate between spiritual substance and natural".But
"Not so with the minds which rule human minds mediately..." By this ruling
'minds' may be meant spiritual forces in the abstract, or possibly the
reference is to the current concept of angels created in the beginning
as purely spiritual beings without a'limbus'. In the Writings it is shown that no angels were so created.(1622)

2. The- Mind of man is organic and is
his spirit.
Spirits and angels are nothing else than human minds
and souls in a human form, stripped of exuviae... which being cast off,
the forms of their minds, such as they were inwardly in their bodies, become
visible.(1623) The mind of man is his spirit
and the spirit is the man.(1624)
Man's spirit or soul is the interior man which lives
after death, and it is organic, for it is adjoined to the body while man
lives in the world.(1625) Man's mind is
organic, being a spiritual organism terminating in a natural organism.(1626)
The affections, the thoughts, and the memory are
nothing but changes in, and states to the "purely organic substances of
the
mind."(1627)
The human mind is organized inwardly of spiritual
substances and outwardly of natural substances, and finally from material
things.(1628)

This is confirmed by the corresponding fact that the natural brain contains
substances highly organized for the-influx of mental
activities; and the brain also is therefore occasionally called "a
spiritual organism."(1629) In the natural mind
natural substances are associated with spiritual substances.(1630)

Note: The natural body is formed by the soul, or by
the spiritual. "In everything spiritual there are three forces - an active
force, a creative force, and a formative force." Creation is effected by
the Lord through intermediates which are spiritual things.(1631) The Primitive of man, or the formative which
is in the seed, is "from spiritual substance"(1632)
and this "spiritual abstracted from natural things" can only be described
in general terms and by "comparisons which are also correspondences."(1633)
The angelic idea of this primitive was presented in a correspondent type
before Swedenborg: it was represented as consisting of organic receptacles
resembling a complex of spherules of three degrees, devoid of any appendages.(1634) After birth, will and understanding being in
these receptacles of love and wisdom.(1635) The lowest of these spiritual degrees is the
spiritual-natural; which with man is the lodgment of hereditary evils.
(In brutes, only this lowest degree is present: their 'rudiments of life'
are not receptacles of love and wisdom from the Lord but of natural affections
and connate science or instinct In clean beasts these receptacles are not
bent contrary to order.)(1636)

Man's spiritual is adjoined to his natural, or the
substantial of the spirit to the material of the body, so adaptedly and
unitedly
that there is not a fibril, stamen, or least thread of them where the
human spirit is not a one with the human body.(1638)
Thus the spiritual accompanies every stamen of the viscera, organs,
and members of the body from outmosts to inmosts.(1639) 1639 Therefore
the soul or spirit which is to live after death has similar form, similar
organs, senses, heart, lungs, etc.: death being merely the separation of
the spiritual substance from the material, or of natural things, which
are material, from spiritual things, which are substantial.(1640)
By death, the spiritual, which is the real agent,
recedes from every single thing in the natural body, and man becomes another
man.(1641) "Then his whole spiritual
body, from head to heel, is completely such as is his mind."(1642)

Note: The spiritual is not merely a purer natural,(1643)
but is above space and time,(1644) and thus discretely
higher in substance as well as in form. But being beyond space and time, spiritual substances
are not "constant" or fixed; for which reason an angelic mind can be formed
and procreated only in man while he lives in the world; and the spirit
must take with him from the inmosts of the natural world a medium
between the spiritual and the natural, by means of which he is limited
so as to subsist and be permanent.(1645) This
medium consists of the natural substances which were associated with his
natural mind in the world.(1646) For man's natural mind consists of natural as
well as of spiritual substances; thought comes from-the spiritual substances,
not from the natural. At death the natural substances recede and
make a cutis-like covering for the spiritual body in which spirits and
angels are.(1647) See further notes on the "Limbus",
above, pp. 20-21, and below, pp.30-31. Because of the above-mentioned character of spiritual
substances, a change of organization of the spirit can only take place
in the material body and by no means in the spiritual body after the former
has been rejected.(1648)

The spiritual body is formed from goods and truths
interiorly in the natural body.(1650) Its
form is various, according to
reception and Opposition.(1651)

5. When separated from the material body. the spirit is therefore
in complete human form.(1652)

At death, all vital substances are drawn out from the labyrinthine recesses
of the material body.(1653) However the
body
might be dispersed, this vital is gathered together in an instant.(1654)
This vital includes everything of his spirit which lived
and felt in the body.(1655) The material
added in the world contributes nothing to this form.(1656)

Note: How "the single and particular things of the
interior degrees," which were formed in the lower degrees, i.e., in the
material body, "return to the next higher degree" by the resolution of
the purer and grosser things of nature which had served as a containing
vessel, is explained in AC 5114.(1657)

B. THE BODIES OF SPIRITS AND ANGELS

1. It is an error to suppose that a soul can exist without a body.(1658)

The body of a spirit is for uses in the spiritual
world, and does not consist of flesh and bones but of such things as correspond
to them.(1659) It appears as if material,(1660)
and spirits do not know but that they are still in the material body.(1661)

Angels, like men, have a body, a rational, and a
spiritual.(1662)
The spiritual body serves as a clothing for the
spirit.(1663) It corresponds exactly to
the material body.(1664)

The spiritual body is complete, with no part lacking;(1665)
not even the sexual organs.(1666) It has
interiors and
exteriors.(1667) It is nourished on
spiritual- food.(1668) It is an organ of the
angelic mind, and is continued from the
head.(1669) It has plus and respiration.(1670)
It breathers and senses and is retained in form
by atmospheres which also are spiritual.(1671)
It has eyes of the substance of-the spiritual world.(1672)
It has all the senses, but it sensates only the things of the other life.(1673)
The spiritual senses what is spiritual, like the material senses what is
material.(1674)
Spirits also wear real garments, which are not mere
appearances, but real substances and essences in form.(1675)
Real appearances in heaven "are called appearances because they are visible,
and they are said to be correspondences and are real because they are from
creation."(1676) "Exterior spiritual things
are so created by the Lord as to clothe or invest interior spiritual things."(1677)

Angels feel with their external senses but think with their
internal sensories, or their brains.(1678)
For will and
understanding are not abstracted from substances which are their subjects.(1679)

Note: The quality of the bodies of spirits was only
gradually realized by Swedenborg.(1680)
His final conviction of the reality of the spiritual body is recorded in
SD 1715, written on March 26, 1748. Later, on Oct. 5, 1748, he records
how he come to a perception, first, of forms transcending all geometrical
forms (but still within nature), and finally, of forms "within within
and above these", which belonged to the sphere of life, and which were
living from the Lord "but still organic". These he calls "spiritual forms."(1681) From this time on he speaks with greater definity
of the bodily forms of spirits and angels.(1682) Spirits newly risen at first suppose that their
bodies are material and doubts and phantasies also arise from Christian
teachings that spirits are either purer natural bodies or else mere breaths,
and that they will resume their material bodies at the "resurrection day".

In distinction to what- is material, it is called
substantial, being of spiritual substance.(1684)
The soul is a spiritual substance
and has nothing in common with space or extension.(1685)
Man's soul or spirit is created from finite things
which are spiritual substances such as are in the spiritual world.(1686)
Spiritual substance is more real then material substance.(1687)

Note: In Ac 444-446 (1688)
the idea that spirit is not organic, but mere abstract thought devoid of
extension, is combated. What is meant by spiritual extension such
as must be predicated even of spiritual things, is shown in TCR 29.

The spiritual is not a "purer natural", as thought by Christians.(1689)

3. The spiritual body contains substantial
organs. fibres. and vital fluids. answering to those in the material body:
but with spirits these are all spiritual.

The human mind has similar formations as the natural
body "because there is a perpetual correspondence of all things of the
mind with all of the body."(1690)

In the spiritual body "there are similar fibres,
nerves, and muscles, because a spirit moves his limbs in like manner as
a man in the world"; heart, lungs, and other interior viscera are also
similar.(1691)

The soul must not be thought of (as by many of the
learned) as something flamy or etherial which will dissipate after death
being devoid of recipient substances or forms. "Without the reception of
life in substances which are forms, there would be no living things in
the natural world nor in the spiritual world. Series of purest filaments,
like bundles, constitute these forms...."(1692)
The cortical and fibrillary substances of the brain
are arranged into such series and bundles "because they correspond to the
series in which the organism of the mind is disposed."(1693)
Divine truths are so disposed.(1694)
"Unless there were such an arrangement in the human
mind, man would not have any analytical faculty of reason."(1695)
Truths or knowledges in the memory are arranged
into fascicular forms by man's 1oves.(1696)
Truths are as it were the spiritual fibres which
form the body of the soul; by fibres are sign)fied the inmost forms which
proceed from good, and by nerves are sign)fied truths.(1697)
Fibres represent spiritual things, cortical substances
represent celestial things.(1698)
The relation of goods and truths are therefore compared
to (animal) spirit in the fibres.(1699)

"It should be known that every good forms itself by truths and also
clothes itself with them and thus distinguishes itself from
other goods: and also that the goods of one stock or kind bind themselves
into bundles... That similar formations are effected in
the human mind (as in the human body) is evident, because there is
a perpetual correspondence of all things of the mind with all
things of the body... The human mind is organized, inwardly, of spiritual
substances and outwardly of natural substances, and
lastly of material substances. A mind, the delights of whose love are
good, consists inwardly of spiritual substances such as are
in heaven; but a mind the delights of whose love are evil, consists
inwardly of spiritual substances such as are in hell...."(1700)

4. The nature of the purely organic substances and forms of the mind
is different in the evil and in the good.(1701)

These forms are inexpressible, but may yet be described
in "spiritual" (i.e., metaphorical) language as "vortex-like ingyrations
and egyrations after the manner of perpetual and involuting helices,
wonderfully bundled together into forms receptive of
life."(1702) In the evil, before reformation,
the natural mind is coiled into gores turned from right to left and
downward,(1703) and man thinks from
an evil will.
In the good, during reformation, these spirals are
turned forward and upward toward the Lord,(1704)
or from left to
right,(1705) when man acts from obedience
to truth. After regeneration, the gyres turn "forwards and are lifted up
towards the Lord, looking from right to left."(1706)
The direction lift to right is given as "contrary to order" because it
looks from truth to good.(1707)
Only the lowest degree of the spiritual, (the "ultimate
spiritual" or the spiritual-natural), when separated from the interior
degrees with man on earth, can be perverted.(1708)
This degree of the mind derives its form partly
from substances of the natural world.(1709)
From conception, this degree has a pervert direction,
contrary to the order of heaven and of the interior degrees,(1710)
and the substances of the spiritual degree therefore react against the
natural substances of the natural mind.(1711)

5. From each and everything of the spiritual
body of an angel there flows forth an encompassing sphere.(1712)

This sphere is substantial and immaterial(1713)
and is a spiritual effluvium(1714) which
proceeds unconsciously(1715)
from the interior memory.(1716)
It conveys the activities of heart and lungs to
the atmospheres or to the aura of heaven, causing a perception as of his
presence with others.(1717)
This spiritual sphere is concordant with the life
of the angel yet is devoid of his life, since it consists of substances
set free and
separated from his body.(1718)
It is compared to the sphere exhaling from man's
material body.(1719) In the world, spiritual
spheres are absorbed by the material body.(1720)

6. The Spiritual Body is the Containant of the Spirit's Mind and
Soul.

Angels have interiors of face and body, and interiors
of will and understanding.(1721) They have
an internal which thinks and an external which speaks, senses and acts.(1722)

Angels, like man, have a body, a rational, and a spiritual.(1723)
All spirits have minds and bodies.(1724)
The spirit is their internal man, their substantial body is their external.(1725)
All angels have a natural degree or natural mind, which
however becomes as it were transparent.(1726)

All angels and spirits are equipped with the three
discrete degrees of the mind, but all degrees are not equally used, opened,
and furnished.(1727)

There are interior degrees within the spirit of which
the spirit knows nothing and which are not part of his "proprium."(1728)

Each type of angel has an Internal, which
is beyond his consciousness and is ruled by the Lord; a Middle degree in
which he
lives as to thought an apperception; and an External, which
is quiescent like the external sensual of man is when he is
asleep.(1729) The body of the angel
also has its degrees.(1730)

7. The Spiritual Body is the External of
the Spirit. and includes Man's whole memory.

The spiritual body from head to foot is wholly such
as is his mind.(1731) It is the outward
from of his mind.(1732) It
makes a one with the mind of the Spirit.(1733)

As to their bodies and sensations, the angels are
in "a lower sphere."(1734)

The spiritual body is formed is accordance with the
thoughts and acts of man's will.(1735)
Spirits and angels are organized substances, although their being called
"immaterial" has led to the notion that they are not organic.(1736)

Everything of man's memory, both the external and
the internal is organic.(1737) During life
on earth, every least thing that man wills, thinks, speaks, or experiences
is inscribed not only on his brain but on the entire body.(1738)
After death, the entire memory is retained intact.(1739)

The external memory of man, with its 'material' ideas
and corporeal affections, becomes quiescent after death.(1740)
Spirits are not allowed to use it except in certain instances.(1741)
It serves as a plane of relative fixity and an ultimate of
order.(1742) It does not grow after death,
but is entirely passive, since the spirit has no further material experiences
passive, since the spirit has no further material experiences; thus
its quality remains unchangeable.(1743) This
fixes the
character of each spirit: "Where the tree falleth, there it shall be."
Eccl. 11:3.

The internal memory is also inscribed on the spirit
itself and on the members of its body; so that his whole life can be read
in the hands and body by examining angels.(1744)

Note: The corporeal memory thus seems to be identified
with the spiritual body as to its quiescent generals and affections; but
the internal memory constitutes the order which is imposed upon this spiritual
organism from within. Only active states manifest themselves through
this body. Other things "are removed so that they do not appear."(1745) Those who die as infants do not have this memory
of material ideas, but still they have a spiritual-natural plane which
grows with experiences in the other life.(1746)

On the correspondence of this outmost plane of the spirit
with his rational, depends the quality of his life.(1747)
This
correspondence is formed while man lives on earth.(1748)
But the correspondence will never be perfect but only most
general.(1749)

8. The relation of the Spiritual Body to
the "Limbus".

Note: The "spiritual body" must not be confused with
what the Writings speak of as the "limbus". This term, meaning border,
or edge, or fringe, is used in TCR 103. It was also used by Paracelsus
to describe a substance bordering on the spiritual and originating an inmost
vital fluid, the Archaeus, which he held to be the source of human seed. In his philosophical works, Swedenborg compares
his "spirituous fluid" to the 'Archaeus'(1750) and
gives to it the very properties which he later ascribes to the 'limbus'.
In Divine Wisdom (viii. e) and in the Economy(1751)
it is shown that this "medium" because it is from the inmosts of nature,
"cannot be described except by abstractions."

The function of the "limbus" seems to be,
to hold the spiritual organization of the corporeal memory in fixed and
inactive state. The limbus is a natural substance, the purest or inmost
substance of nature, and there are no indications that it has any other
function in the life of spirits and angels than to serve as a "medium"
between the two worlds. "The angels know that there is such a medium."(1752)
This would obviously not be said of it was identical with the spiritual
body. When it is further told that this limbus is related to the
spiritual body as the dead cutis of the skin is related to the living tissues
of the natural body,(1753) it is evident that
it is not a physical or spatial relationship which is described.

The meaning of the teaching (in TCR 103) - that "this
limbus,
with those who go to heaven, is below, and the spiritual above; but this
limbus,
with those who come into hell, is above and the spiritual below" - probably
refers to the fact that the evil are still motivated by the corporeal affections
which were formed in their natural mind, and are thus spiritually 'upside
down' - as they indeed appear in the light of heaven. That the hells are
within the sphere of the natural degree of the mind only, is shown in DLW
345, 270, 274, 275.

C. THE HUMAN INTERNAL "SOUL", OR
"INMOST"

Note: The term "soul" is used in the Writings both
in a specific sense and in a general sense. As it often means the whole
surviving spirit of man,(1754) there is
need for care in examining the context before concluding that the expression
has reference to the superconscious "inmost" of the spirit.

FUNCTIONAL ADJUSTMENTS
IN MENTAL DEGREES

1. In the most abstract sense. the "internal
man" is the influx of mutual love and the presence of the Divine with man.(1755)

It is therefore to be distinguished form the "soul"
or "spirit" (by which are meant, here, the interior man), and is something
which is within the spirit when mutual love is in it. It is nothing but
mutual love; it is the Lord's, and is the Lord with man.(1756)
The spiritual or soul of man, on the other hand,
is "the interior man which lives after death. And this is organic, for
it is adjoined to the body while man is living in the world...."(1757)
With the angels, this "internal man" is the Lord's
possession, through which the Divine speaks when angels serve as the "angel
of Jehovah."(1758)

Note: Elsewhere in the Writings, the term "internal
man" has a much broader meaning.

2. "With every angel and also with every man
there is an inmost or supreme degree. or something inmost and supreme.
intowhich the Divine of the Lord inflows first and most nearly...."(1759)
This inmost or highest degree is the entrance and
home of the Lord in angels and in men.(1760)
What is arranged and disposed by the Lord in this
inmost, does not manifestly inflow into the perception of any angel, because
it is above his thought.(1761) This inmost is
above the celestial, and is devoid of a name.(1762)
The heaven that is nearest the Lord is composed of these human internals;
but this is above the inmost angelic heaven.(1763)
From it man is man, distinct from the brutes.(1764)
It is the very first form from which man becomes and is man.(1765)

RELATIONS OF MIND AND BODY

These internals of men have no life in themselves,
but are the inmost forms receptive of the Lord's life.(1766)
(The "internal man" of the Lord on earth was however Jehovah Himself, thus
infinite.)(1767)
All man's faculties (or degrees) including the soul
are merely potencies to which correspond activating forces.(1768)
The soul is acted upon only by God(1769)
The human soul is a superior spiritual substance
and therefore receives influx directly from God: whereas the human mind
is an inferior spiritual substance and therefore receives this influx mediately
through the spiritual world.(1770)
"The Soul properly so called" is the inmost substance
from which man is formed. It originates the second, which is called the
rational mind or intellectual mind.(1771)
By the Soul is meant the Spiritual of man, a supra-celestial
essence, purely spiritual, thus different from the soul of brutes which
is inferior and partakes of the spiritual and the natural.(1772)

ADDENDA: FUNCTIONAL ADJUSTMENTS OF DEGREES

For human life, with every angel or man, there is
need for a series of discrete planes which serve the functions of

a) a Soul or unconscious inmost;
b) a Spiritual Mind for super sensible thought
or for an internal
intellectual.
c) a Natural Mind for conscious thought and
perception;
d) a Body, or a dormant organic external.(1773)

From Spiritual Diary, nos. 5547-5552, we conclude that
the same degrees may have different functions for different grades of angels.
The angels have a degree which answers in function on the super-sensible
mind (spiritual and celestial degrees) which
man. With the celestial, the degree below the inmost serves as a Soul
or as the "internal" or "internal intellectual" does with
man.(1774) The third degree is what
serves them for conscious life, as the natural mind does for man.(1775)
But the spiritual angels who are of external type
live in the "natural" degree, or interiorly in the natural. The internal
degrees
which they have but not "opened", serve them as a "soul." The sensual,
of lowest of their degrees, is quiescent.(1776)
See
Diagram.